Leighton is able to conjure an entire universe using only a female figure and a background, which are the result of a careful process in which nothing is left to chance. Flaming June presented himself to the public at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in 1895 with four other works that together reveal the essence of Leighton’s vision as an artist, condensed after decades of observation, work and travel. The exhibition also explores the creative process of Flaming June, one of the artist’s latest paintings. On the artist’s death, more than 250 of these landscapes were found in his home, now spread across museums and private collections. These small memories, which can be seen in the exhibition, sometimes served to provide details of larger paintings and also decorated the walls of the studio and other more private rooms, such as their bedroom. They are intimate works, made for pleasure Leighton said painting them was “the most irresponsible and relaxing thing,” and the best pastime. In almost every place he visited, Leighton painted exquisite sketches of landscapes that until recently have been his least well-known facet. His passion was the Mediterranean, which he toured throughout his life (from Spain to Syria passing Italy, Greece, Egypt and North Africa). In contrast to its relatively insular setting, Leighton was from a young age a European and cosmopolitan artist. Similar works in the exhibition seem to negate the distance between the imagined and the real Mediterranean, between Homer’s Greece and the land described in the guides with which Leighton prepared his travels. Invites you to look again and again and yet never reveals exactly what we are seeing – a personification of the month of June, or of the sun? A reflection on the aesthetic link between sleep and death? Even with references to antiquity, the painting transcends any historical or even narrative context. Flaming June is a painting that presents the viewer with a riddle as beautiful as it is indecipherable. One of his constants is the female figure, and his muse par excellence was actress Dorothy Deene, immortalized in her most famous work. Leighton is a lover of beauty, which does not prevent him from being also a complex artist. The exhibition, which is the first dedicated to the artist in America, provides a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the fascinating personal universe of the creator of Flaming June and enjoy the art of one of the most important artists of the nineteenth century. The Museo de Arte de Ponce exhibition F rederic Leighton and the Eternal Mediterranean featured 18 works (paintings with female figures, small oil landscapes, color sketches, and preparatory drawings for Flaming June) on loan from the Leighton House Museum in London, which were displayed along with others from the Museum’s collection to deepen Leighton’s contacts with his contemporaries. Intelligent, cultured, and of distinguished appearance (although rather austere), he was one of the chief adornments of London society.Enigmatic and evocative, the canvases of Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) revitalized the World of British Art in the last third of the 19th century with his personal interpretation of the Greco-Roman world. In spite of this success, Leighton was for several years regarded as an alien presence in the British art world, but from the mid-1860s he enjoyed a level of worldly success that was matched perhaps only by Millais, his almost exact contemporary: he became president of the Royal Academy in 1878, was made a baronet in 1886, and a few days before he died was raised to the peerage, the first (and so far only) British artist to be so honoured. It was not until 1859 that he settled in England, but he had earlier made his name with Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence, which he painted in Rome: it was exhibited at the 1855 Royal Academy exhibition and bought by Queen Victoria (it is now on loan from the Royal Collection to the National Gallery, London). He travelled widely in Europe as a boy and his artistic education was gained principally in Frankfurt, Rome, and Paris. English painter, draughtsman, and occasional sculptor, one of the dominant figures of late Victorian art. (Born Scarborough, 3 December 1830 died London, 25 January 1896).
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